


The only way

by ReynaAtTheEnd



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Canon Divergence, Chess, Gen, One Shot, Ruthless Claude, What-If, almost more a concept than a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23556172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReynaAtTheEnd/pseuds/ReynaAtTheEnd
Summary: "Y...you can't..." Edelgard pawed weakly at his chest. "I have...to much...left undone...""So did I. It wasn't enough to stop you." He gently brushed her hair away from her eyes. "I'm sorry it had to be this way. But I can't hand my people over to Agartha. I can't sacrifice my people to your war. The duty of a king is to protect his people, after all."Edelgard underestimated Claude, even after he told her that he was a schemer.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 181





	The only way

“Do you play chess often?”

It was an innocent enough question when Claude found Edeglard in the main hall, having just won a game against Ferdinand. The princess had given him that slightly condescending side-eye that he'd come to associate with her and given the affirmative, calling it a childhood hobby. He'd joked around for a few moments before asking her for a bout, irreverent as ever even as his stomach twisted itself into an unpleasant knot. For a moment he was afraid she'd refuse, despite the bait he laid out by boasting of his undefeated status.

_She never could refuse a challenge._

“What sort of move is that?” Edelgard asked, raising one eyebrow. They were far removed from the rest of the monastery, sitting at a table in the top of one of the tower balconies, cool air fluttering around them. “You've left your rook completely exposed.”

“I do everything for a reason,” Claude responded arily. His eyes swept over the board, taking in the position of her queen and her knights. She'd started, being white, and aggressively pressed her way across the board; either trying to draw out his queen or to force him to break up his planned strategy to prevent her from overwhelming him.

She snorted and moved her bishop, taking the black piece off the board. “I believe it. Respect it? That I can't say.”

“Harsh,” He responded lightly, even while his stomach twinged. “Didn't you send Caspar, Hubert and Dorothea into a proverbial meat grinder during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion? How did you expect them to take out me, Dimitri, Teach, Sylvain, Ingrid and Raphael all at once?” He then casually moved his knight, boxing her bishop against the wall and giving him a perfect shot at her rook.

“I hadn't thought they'd be fighting all six of you,” Edelgard acknowledged begrudgingly. “You reached the Blue Lions first, and you had to defeat them as well in order to win the crown. I had assumed, knowing you, that you would prefer to fight each army one at a time.”

“So you wanted us to waste time fighting each other while missing the creeping threat from your end,” He said easily, watching her move her queen. “Just giving up that piece? You could have saved it,” He caught the bishop and moved it aside. His knight was in an even better position now, close to hers, and he wondered why she wasn't reacting to it.

“The queen is more valuable,” She countered. Her eyes flashed for a moment, a slight scowl on her face as she examined the board. “In these situations, sacrifices must be made.” She paused, then rubbed her forehead furiously. “Ah, damn this headache...it hasn't let up since this morning.”

“Easy to pontificate when you aren't the one being sacrificed,” Claude noted. He examined his options and castled, moving his king away from the approaching danger. “Isn't our job as future rulers to ensure that the people who live under our rule live safe and fulfilling lives?”

“Of course it is. But since when have pretty promises ever come without a cost?” She moved her queen again, taking out one of his rooks. “You're putting yourself in a corner, Claude.”

“Am I?” He would have smiled, but it would have come out as a grimace. She rubbed her forehead again, unconsciously. “I wouldn't be so quick to assume, princess.”

“Why do I feel like you aren't talking about chess, mister schemer?” Edelgard asked dryly as she watched him shift his rook. Her queen was in danger from several directions, depending on where she moved. The piece was surrounded by his own.

“Call it a personal qualm,” Claude responded. He took a drink of tea; green apple was far from his favorite, but it was sweet, and settled his stomach a little bit. “I don't like the idea of sacrificing people who have no choice in the matter. I don't like throwing lives away when other alternatives exist. Life is too precious to be spent so callously.”

She arched one eyebrow. “So the secretive, manipulative alliance heir apparent has a hidden soft side? Imagine that.” She frowned at the board. “...How did you set this up?” She put one finger on top of her queen, uneasily trying to choose where it should go. “I didn't see...”

“Don't feel bad,” His said, leaning back in his seat. “I've used this trick before. Few people see it coming...though Teach did.” He chuckled. “For someone who didn't play the game much, it was surprisingly tough to beat her.”

“She has a good mind for it.”

“Yeah. I mean...she realized that Kostas was a paid assassin before we confronted him in the valley.” He saw her stiffen slightly. He resisted a dry smile. “Said something to the tune of 'there's no way a run-of-the-mill bandit stumbles on three Crest-bearing children and decides he's going to try and kill them anyway. Not unless there's a _lot_ in it for him.”

Edelgard tapped her queen a few times on the head, let out a breath, and used it to take his other knight on the far side of the board. He raised one eyebrow. “Sacrificing your best piece, too?” He took it with his rook, gazing down at a board now much more in his favor.

“There's no piece but the king who isn't expendable.” She responded. “I can make another queen.” She indicated the pawns three squares from the exposed part of his back line.

“Was that what you figured when you hired Kostas to kill me and Dimitri?” Claude asked, his stomach turning over slightly. “That it would be easy and painless to replace us as figureheads in the lands we would have inherited?”

“...What sort of nonsense are you spouting? Have you caught a cold?” She asked, tossing her head back.

He snorted. “Nice poker face, princess. I probably would have fallen for it if I hadn't been stealing notes from Solon since long before Remire.”

Edelgard stared levelly at him, placing both hands on the table.

“Maybe it's because of my birth,” Claude said with a shrug, reading her silent question. “But it was pretty suspicious that the curator of Garreg Mach's library – the heart of learning in the main religion of the land – was so happy and willing to slip me contraband information that contradicted sacred tenants. I started digging to figure out what he really wanted from me; admittedly, my first thought was that he was an agent of the Western Church, seeking out sympathetic political heirs after they lost Lonato. Yet somehow, some way, what I found was even more fucked up than a group of splinter fanatics wasting lives to alter a few lines of scripture.”

“He never suspected you?” Edelgard asked. The calm in her voice didn't reach her eyes.

“He thought he had me hooked through all that hidden lore,” Claude responded. “He didn't think I was smart enough to see through him. What savage, insignificant insect could possibly outwit a proper Agarthan, after all?”

“...What do you want me to say? I'm sorry?” She gazed coldly at him. “I'm not. If you know a fraction about him, about what he truly is, you know I'm doing what I must.”

It should have smarted, after they spent those months acting as playful rivals. There was a flicker of pain somewhere inside him, but the scar tissue built up over childhood assassination attempts kept it at bay. “I'm sure the people of Remire would find that notion very comforting.”

“ _I had nothing to do with that_ ,” The words came out as a snarl. She smacked one open palm on the table, her eyes blazing with anger. “Nor do I condone it. It was a massacre, a travesty.”

“You're damn right it was,” Claude responded evenly, meeting her gaze without flinching. “You can't control them at all, can you?” He picked up his knight and took hers, leaving a direct path to her king that his bishop could take full advantage of.

“I promise you, they will get exactly what they deserve.”

 _That's not an answer, princess. But you know that, don't you? You don't care that you can't control them. You think that you need them, and as long as you can use them to get what you want, than anything they do is worth the price._ She didn't have to say it, it was plain in her eyes and the way she spoke that one sentence. Just like the squabbling nobles he'd learned the navigate when he came to his mother's home.

“After how many more of their experiments swallow innocent human lives? I assume Hubert knows that you let them turn innocent Empire citizens into Demonic Beasts, but does Petra know? Does Dorothea or Linhardt or Ferdinand?”

“You would have me dethrone that false goddess with half a continent, run by the men who allowed the torture and murder of my siblings, against the mislead hordes who blindly believe that she is their benevolent savior?” Edelgard scoffed. “I expect that kind of naivety from Dimitri, not you.” She moved her king behind the safety of several other pieces.

“Why don't you just kill Rhea?” He asked easily. “I could do that in an evening. She dies mysteriously, the faithful turn to Teach – the new bearer of the Crest of Flames. There will be outrage and demands for answers, but it would die down eventually. Why drown everyone in blood? Why help _them?_ ”

“Because killing her won't undo everything she's done to Fodlan. It won't get rid of the Crests, it won't reunify the Empire she split apart to keep the masses bickering with each other, it won't get rid of the Serios scriptures that the weak cling to in the place of bettering the world they live in.” Edelgard stared challengingly at him. “It won't change the belief that those of foreign shores are tainted and sinful.”

His stomach twisted. _That_ he hadn't seen coming. “What gave it away?”

“Golden skin and emerald eyes are not a combination you see in Leicester outside of bastard children born from raids,” She responded with a shrug. Claude resisted the urge to glare at her, to comment on the number of relationships that were actually consensual, remark that some nobles had clandestine relationships with the 'invaders' in the hopes of greater numbers of healthier children, how he resented the implication that his mother had allowed any man but the one she loved to touch her. “I'm surprised Lorenz hasn't figured it out yet. Though I suppose he's not the wisest person you'll ever meet.”

“He's not that bad, once you get to know him. He just repeats what his parents taught him. He's not inflexible. He can learn.” Claude shook his head. “People will learn, Edelgard.”

“They don't _want_ to learn, and they never will so long as Rhea has a stranglehold on Fodlan. Don't you see? All the suffering you've had to live with, put up with, all of it can be laid at her feet for changing the scriptures.”

“Of course I know that.” He moved his piece, marveling at the fact that she was still pushing the offensive and not paying full attention to his plan. Perhaps allowing her to capture his other rook was the perfect feint after all. “I came here to kill her, at first.”

“What changed?” She barely twitches at the revelation. He wondered if she respected him a more for it. 

“Teach.” He smiled softly as he imagined her, saw her smiling face in his mind's eye. Saw her pride in him as he presented her with a strategy, saw the way her eyes glowed when he finally teased a laugh out of her.

Edelgard glared at him in silence. Now he saw resentment in those eyes, burning like flames, and he wondered if she hated him for stealing Teach's attention out from under her nose after how aggressively she had courted the Ashen Demon. “How could things possibly get better if you replace Rhea with Thales?” He asked sarcastically, waiting for her move.

“Who says that's my plan?” She snapped. “He won't last any longer than her once I've finally put an end to her shadow rule. There's no place for him and his kind in the world I will reforge.”

“...You really think they're just going to accept that, with everything they have at their disposal to fight you?” Claude knew there were dark gaps he'd yet to fill in the capabilities of these mysterious enemies; things he _needed_ to find out, and quickly. “You think that you'll use them and then dispose of them and there will be no consequences?”

“I know who they are and what they do and how they look down on us as primitive, stupid savages. They think I'm incapable of outsmarting them. They won't expect me and the strength of my people.”

 _After you've given them inrods into every corner of Fodlan. And you call Dimitri naive?_ “That sounds like an awfully big 'maybe', princess.”

“There is no other path to tread. I'm sick of a world that will not change. Either pledge yourself to my cause, stand aside, or be destroyed. I will not let another innocent soul be sacrificed to this twisted system of Crests and lies.”

“No, you'll just sacrifice them into the meat grinder that is war,” Claude noted quietly. “All to reset Fodlan to how it was in the beginning? One Empire ruled by one Emperor, a ruler that controls all facets of the land? ...Like Rhea does?” Her eyes burned with actual hatred at that. “Why do the Kingdom and the Alliance have to be conquered? Why do their armies have to be broken on the wheel of war and consumed by the Empire? Why do thousands...tens of thousands...have to die?”

Edelgard is unmoved by the mental image that left him feeling sick. “It's the only way to bring down the Crests. Bring down Rhea.”

Claude gave her a faintly incredulous look. “I don't like Rhea any more than you do, but why are you willing to start a war with the two completely uninvolved countries adjacent to her in order to depose her? What could possibly justify that?”

“Returning things to as they should be!” Edelgard snapped back. “The Kingdom and the Alliance were never meant to exist. Rhea created them, one after the other, so the masses would bicker among-st themselves and face invented enemies rather than turn against her control over them. It gives her more authority that so many people have to come to her to arbitrate disputes. Only when her creations are swept aside can true wisdom prevail.”

“I'm sure that'll make the power hungry nobles who resent having lost power in those countries very happy to crown you,” Claude snarked.

“If you think I'd bow to the whims of those greedy parasites, you are sorely mistaken.”

“I think that you're one woman who's tunnel visioned on an endgame so greatly that she won't be able to see how people are taking advantage of it along the way,” He parried back flatly. “Which makes sense, seeing as you seem to think that Faerghus and the Alliance will accept your new Empire with open arms rather than bitterly resenting you for killing their beloved prince and stripping them of the freedom from kings that they fought so hard to achieve. For killing their sons and daughters and calling it justice done.”

“And what would you do differently?” She asked scathingly.

Claude spread his arms. “I will make them _want_ to open their borders to each other,” he responded without hesitation. “I'll prove without a shadow of a doubt that there is more we can learn and achieve together rather than apart. I'll break down the walls we built up between each other by making everyone realize they want to be able to cross them. It won't be easy - there will be fighting, even if there isn't a war - but it will work, and it will _last._ That is the only way a single kingdom will truly come together – when everyone wants to be near each other. Not when they're forced to join at the point of a bloody sword.”

“I can hardly believe you're Almyran,” Edelgard said flatly after a moment of staring at him.

“Technically I'm half,” He retorted with a lightness he didn't feel.

“You're a _dreamer,_ that's what you are.” She crossed her arms. “Those who benefit from Crests, from the false faith, from everything wrong with this cesspool won't give it up for a dreamer. They will only surrender it when their choices are that and death. It is the only way!”

“It's not the only way,” He said with calm, steely certainty. He was so, so grateful to Teach. Had he sounded like this before? What might he have burdened his conscience with if he hadn't convinced her to wander into his life? “It's just the only way you allow yourself to see. Because you think you're the only one who can possibly reform Fodlan. Just like Saint Serios did at the end of the war against Nemesis.” He sighed. “I'm sorry, Edelgard. I think you're right, about a lot of things. But I can't hand Fodlan over to Agartha. I can't allow _that many_ innocents to die terrible deaths.”

“Then I will have to walk over you,” Edelgard said coldly. “It's a pity you fell from this balcony. The professor will be devastated.” She stood and started making her way towards him.

He let out a dry chuckle. “Edelgard...do you think I'd have this conversation with you if I hadn't already won?” He moved his queen, putting her king in checkmate, before standing up to meet her.

“You haven't won until I'm dead,” She retorted.

“I know.” Claude met her eyes with a calm he no longer felt. “That's why I killed you at breakfast.”

Her eyes widened. She froze mid step, still poised to seize him and use her Crest-boosted strength to fling him from the balcony to keep her bloody secrets. Slowly, one hand travelled up to her face; all the blood had drained from it some time ago, and her breath began to come out in short, harsh gasps.

“I warned you,” Claude said softly. “I called myself shiftiness incarnate. I called myself a schemer, a tactician. I know I play up my love of jokes and teasing to throw people off, but I _told_ you. You still underestimated me?” He shook his head. “Even Gloucester doesn't do that anymore.”

“Y-You...” She stumbled backwards. Her face was turning gray, her veins standing out in stark relief, and a shudder wracked her whole body. “W-What...when d-did you...”

“Poison Clary,” He said, still softly, as he stood up. He watched with grim, sad satisfaction as she stumbled again, her whole body trembling. “I mixed it with a sedative to ease the pain. Not nearly as well as I hoped to, or it would have overwhelmed the flavor of your cider. Petra said that the hardest part would be making sure that Hubert drank his share; I left that part to her, and I was a little surprised at how she pulled it off in the end.” He grimaced. “Drinking some and kissing him to get it down his throat...that could have gone wrong in so many ways."

Claude took a few steps forward and caught Edelgard as her legs gave out, sinking to his knees on the stone balcony. “P...Petra...?” She choked out.

“Yeah,” He replied. “She did like you, as much as any hostage with an ax over her head can like a captor. But she loves her people far more, and did not want them forced into a war they had no stake in, to die for the men who invaded and killed their king, because her life was being held over their heads.” He rocked her gently in his arms. “Bernadetta will feel a bit woozy for the rest of the day, but she'll bounce back. Dorothea, too. Ferdinand and Linhardt will probably spend the weekend in bed, and I had to have Caspar rushed to Manuela when he drank far more than I anticipated.” He sighed. “Lorenz, Felix, Sir Alois, Hannamen, they'll all be pretty woozy as well. Nothing dangerous, not even for the old man...the sickness will also flare up in those merchants who have been appearing steadily ever since the ball. They probably brought it in from the Empire. Traveling en-mass like that tends to be a breeding ground for sickness. I'll give you credit, Edelgard, I did a pretty big double-take when I realized how many of your people were sneaking in.”

“Y..you can't...” Edelgard pawed weakly at his chest. “You can't...I have too much...left undone...”

“So do I, and that wasn't enough to stop you.” Claude responded, brushing her hair off of her sweat-soaked face. “I'm sorry it had to be like this. Really...I'm so, so sorry. If the two of us could have stood together...” He bowed his head. “But I can't hand over my people to Agartha. I can't sacrifice them to your war. I have to protect them. That's the duty of a king, after all.”

Her attempted retort broke down into a coughing fit. She shook and trembled, her attempts to escape the cradle of his arms weakening more and more by the second. “Agartha will be defeated, don't worry. Their pet lords and chancellors as well. They have a debt to you and Dimitri and Rhea that I intend to see paid. And as for Adrestia...well, I had a look at the line of Blaiddyd back many generations, and I learned something truly fascinating. It'll take some wrangling to assert the claim, of course...but that's what he'll have me and Teach for.”

Edelgard's eyes started to haze over. She still wore a look of disbelief above everything else, even fear. “I'm sorry,” He repeated softly. “Edelgard, I'm sorry. Go to your siblings.”

She died moments later. Claude let out a heavy sigh and stood up, carrying her bridal style in his arms. _Did it have to end like this?,_ he wondered. _Is there a world where the three of us could have fought the real enemy together, united?_

The wind didn't answer him. Instead he began making his way downstairs, silently rehearsing the story he would give Manuela, Dimitri and Seteth.

There was still much to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what to say. I didn't quite expect Claude to be the sweet boy that he ultimately was when I started playing his route; I thought he would be...well...a bit more like this underneath the warm smiles that didn't reach the eyes. Now I love my sweet Claude, but I do wonder what might have been if he'd been the more ruthless character I'd anticipated when I first met him. Maybe something like this?
> 
> I wrote most of this at one in the morning when I couldn't sleep. I hope it's not too rambly.


End file.
